As the hurricane passed over the island, sustaining maximum wind speeds of 155 miles per hour, wind ripped apart palm trees and buildings. On the morning of September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico’s southeastern coast just below the threshold of a Category 5 storm. She had been studying the European country’s relationship with energy and debt extensively before something else had caught and held her attention- the lights had gone out in Puerto Rico. “I was due to travel to Greece in two weeks,” she laughs, two months later, eyeing her crutches and clunky boot. Although she didn’t know it at the time, she had broken her foot.
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In the middle of this, Sandy was looking for Roque - plus planning an escape route in case of tear gas - and stumbled over uneven pavement and went down hard over a curb. The austerity measures put in place by the federally appointed oversight board to combat debt has sparked anger among many Puerto Ricans. Let’s seize the banks,” reads another sign. Police stood in an unmoving black and blue line as protestors drummed on the street barriers and took videos on their phones. A federal oversight board had implemented austerity measures to deal with the island’s debt problem, cutting funding to pensions, health care, and education. Together, they’ve compiled the story of this crisis into a documentary called “ DisemPOWERed: Puerto Rico’s Perfect Storm.”īut for many of the people in the streets, this was personal. The collapse of the energy grid in the wake of Maria resulted in the largest blackout in American history, and the second-largest worldwide. What they found was a precarious electrical grid based on a muddled web of economic dependence, growing debt, and politics rooted in colonialism. She was anticipating a clash with police where the march’s two routes joined together.įor a year and a half after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, she and Roque had researched the causes of the blackout and spent weeks in San Juan and the surrounding area. There was music, singing - a squeeze of humanity as Sandy neared the junction where electrical union demonstrators collided with university protesters. Puerto Rican flags, many black and white to symbolize mourning over the island’s plight, fluttered above the crowd.
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“Se acabaron las promesas,” one said: The promises are over. People held wooden shields and handwritten signs in Spanish. “It’s one of the days where there tends to be the most public manifestation of people’s anger over everything,” she says. Sandy, a UNC anthropologist, expected similar reactions this year. During last year’s May Day, demonstrators were tear-gassed and arrested while protesting the government’s response to the ongoing economic crisis. She was on high alert for any signs of trouble. It was a hot day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Sandy Smith-Nonini was watching her son, filmmaker Roque Nonini, as he filmed one of the march routes for the 2019 May Day demonstrations.